Rough Water
 During World War II, a Navy line officer averts disaster by ordering another boat out of his way — only to find he has just chewed out one very well-known general.

The USS Sonoma made an amphibious landing at Morotai on Halmahera Island, Indonesia, on Sept. 15, 1944. I was officer of the deck (OOD) on the fleet tug that day, and our mission was to pull landing craft and ships off the beach after they unloaded.

We spent a great deal of time and energy trying to pull an unloaded LST off the beach. She wouldn’t budge. We sent a wire from our bow to her stern and pulled “back full.” We were pulling as hard as we could on the LST’s stern anchor. Her twin rudders were turning slowly back and forth as we attempted to slide her off the beach. Nothing was working. We decided to slack off on our wire, and when it fell below the surface, we planned to back full suddenly. The wire would come up, losing all slack with such force and speed that it would give the LST a powerful jerk.

The captain was just about to give the command to back full when I saw a couple of landing craft carrying personnel heading straight between us and the LST, past our bow, and toward the wire, which was lying beneath the surface.

Although they couldn’t see the wire, judging from all the activity on the LST and on our ship, they should have known there was danger. If the captain gave the order, the wire could come up and strike the bottom of one of their boats with enough force to toss it into the air, injuring, or even killing, anyone onboard.

As OOD, it was my job to grab a megaphone and warn them, which I did, very quickly and with some disgust. I shouted something like, “Get out of there you stupid jerks! You wanna get killed? Go around our stern!” (My actual language was quite a bit saltier.)

As soon as I finished shouting, an officer in the lead boat made acknowledgment and yelled to his coxswain, and the boat turned 90 degrees left to go out around our stern.

Just then I recognized the two people looking over the bow ramp of their boat — Gen. Douglas MacArthur, USA, and Adm. Daniel Barby, commander of the 7th Fleet Amphibious Forces. I stopped yelling and hunched down below the bridge rail until they had gone around our stern and were on their way. I spent several hours in fear, sure that a reprimand would come my way. But nothing ever happened.

I tell this story often when old sea salts get together, and I always end with the line, “As far as I know, President Harry Truman and I are the only two people to tell General MacArthur where to go — and to get away with it!”

— Stacy L. Roberts Jr. is a retired Navy captain who lives in Duarte, Calif.
He followed his World War II service by becoming a Navy chaplain.